Although time travel hasn't been a particularly original plot device since H.G. Wells popularized the time machine in 1895, if there's one thing that Phillip K. Dick's posthumous career has proved, it's that we love time travel - even when it takes place in a hot tub. And there's nothing Hollywood enjoys more than turning that love into sweet, sweet dollars.
To that end, Relativity Media just made a preemptive deal to scoop up Timeless, a spec script from Enchanted writer Bill Kelly. The story centers on a recently married man who loses his wife, but discovers she has left him a vast fortune. Haunted by an issue left unresolved between the two of them, the man decides to invest the money in an effort to build a time machine, so he can see her one last time.
Australian director Phillip Noyce (pictured above), whose past efforts have included both Salt and Clear and Present Danger, is negotiating to helm the pic, and Sunil Perkash, who produced both Salt and Enchanted, is on board to produce. According to Deadline, Perkash loved the story when Kelly pitched it to him, and turned around and quickly sold the deal to Noyce and Relativity.
That's great news - as anyone who actually watched the surprisingly good Enchanted will attest - because Bill Kelly is a really promising new talent in Hollywood. I'm looking forward to seeing more from him. Unfortunately, it could be a while before Timeless moves into production. Noyce has already signed on to direct another spy thriller, Wenceslas Square, in addition to his already in-the-works sequel to this summer's Salt. He's also reportedly working on an adaptation of author Tim Winton's Booker Prize-winning Dirt Music, with Russell Crowe as a possible lead. So while Timeless could certainly be a film to look forward to, it looks like it may have to go on the back burner for now.
Source: Deadline, Collider

Salt the propulsive new thriller from Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger Patriot Games) has been dubbed “Bourne with boobs ” but that label isn’t entirely accurate. In the role of Evelyn Salt a CIA staffer hunted by her own agency after a Russian defector fingers her in a plot to murder Russia’s president Angelina Jolie keeps her two most potent weapons holstered hidden under pantsuits and trenchcoats and the various other components of a super-spy wardrobe that proudly emphasizes function over flash.
But flash is one thing Salt never lacks for. Its breathless cat-and-mouse game hits full-throttle almost from the outset when a former KGB officer named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) stumbles into a CIA interrogation room and begins spilling details of a vast conspiracy. Back in the ‘70s hardline elements of the Soviet regime launched an ambitious new front in the Cold War flooding the western world with orphans trained to infiltrate the security complexes of their adopted homelands and wait patiently — decades if necessary — for the order to initiate a series of assassinations intended to trigger a devastating nuclear clash between the superpowers from which the treacherous Reds would emerge triumphant.
The Soviet Union may have long ago collapsed (or did it? Hmmm...) but its army of brainwashed killer orphan spies remains in place and if this crazy Orlov fellow is to be believed they stand poised to reignite the Cold War. It’s a preposterous — even idiotic — scheme but no more so than any of our government’s various harebrained proposals to kill Castro back in the ‘60s. As such the CIA treats it with grave seriousness even the part that that pegs Salt who just happens to be a Russian-born orphan herself as a key player in the conspiracy.
Salt bristles at the accusation but suspecting a set-up she opts to flee rather than face interrogation from her bosses Winter (Liev Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor). A former field agent she’s been confined to a desk job since a clandestine operation in North Korea went south leaving her with a nasty shiner and a rather unremarkable German boyfriend (now her unremarkable German husband). She’s clearly kept up her training during while cubicle-bound however and in a blaze of resourceful thinking and devastating Parkour Fu she fends off a dozen or so agents of questionable competence and takes to the streets where she sets about to clear her name and unravel the Commie orphan conspiracy before the authorities can catch up with her. That is if she isn’t a part of the conspiracy.
The premise which aims to resurrect Cold War tensions and graft them onto a modern-day spy thriller is absurdly clever — and cleverly absurd. But Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay isn’t satisfied with the merely clever and absurd — it must be mind-blowing. Salt is one of those thrillers that ladles out its backstory slowly and in tiny portions every once in a while dropping a revelatory bombshell that effectively blows the lid off everything that happened beforehand. No one is who they seem and every action every gesture no matter how seemingly trivial is imbued with some kind of grand significance. The effect of piling on one insane twist after another has the effect of gradually diluting the narrative. When anything is possible nothing really matters.
But spy thrillers by definition trade in the preposterous and the principal function of the summer blockbuster is to entertain. In that regard Salt more than fulfills its charge. Noyce wisely keeps the story moving at pace that allows little time for asking uncomfortable questions or poking holes in the film’s frail plot. And he has an able partner in the infinitely versatile Jolie who having already exhibited formidable action-hero chops in Wanted and the Tomb Raider films proves remarkably adept at the spy game as well.
It’s well-known that Jolie wasn’t the first choice to star in Salt joining the project only after Tom Cruise dropped out citing the story’s growing similarities to the Mission: Impossible films. But she’s more than just a capable replacement; she’s a welcome upgrade over Cruise not least because she’s over a decade younger (and a few inches taller) than her predecessor. Should Brad Bird require a pinch-hitter for Ethan Hunt he knows where to look.